The dominating commercial interest was the Wool Trade. England was famous for wool, and to this trade Winchester, as a natural centre with Southampton as her port, owed her prosperity.
North of the High Street, not far from the Westgate, stood the great Hall where the wool was brought and sampled, and here the great Tron or weighing machine was kept on which the wool was weighed. In Edward III.’s time the Winchester wool trade was at its height. His wars with France, really undertaken to enable him to control the Channel, and so to keep the trade with Flanders in his own hands, had prospered, and when he introduced his famous wool-stapling measure, by which ‘staples’ or exclusive wool markets were set up in ten towns in England, of which Winchester was one, the commercial prosperity of the city increased by leaps and bounds. But, alas! Edward’s policy was only too successful. The Flanders trade was considered more important than local English
BREWHOUSE, WINCHESTER COLLEGE
College Brewhouse, adjoining College Street, is one of the oldest portions of the College buildings. Over the archway one of the turrets of Outer Gateway is to be seen.
interests, and when, some years after, he appointed Calais as the staple town, and removed the staple from Winchester, the days of the commercial prosperity of our city were numbered.
But while the wool trade lasted,—and it only died out as such trades do by degrees,—Winchester with all its limitations must have been a rarely interesting and attractive place in which to “catch the manners fleeting as they rise.” It is much to be regretted that the Winchester of this period had no shrewd and genial humorist, no Chaucer or Jonson, to mingle with the crowd, and to preserve for us, whether by pen or pencil, the humours of the day,—the varied types, lay and cleric, monk, friar, pilgrim, merchant, or franklin, who might have been found periodically gathered either at the Wool Market or the Hall of the Gild merchant, or at ‘the George,’—for there was a ‘George’ at Winchester then, even as now,—in as full and diverting variety as ever foregathered at the Tabard itself; but interesting as those intrinsically were, their interest was as nothing beside the two great dominating attractions which periodically gathered all sorts and conditions of men for temporary hospitality within her walls, the pilgrimages, and the great Fair of St. Giles. And if it was the Wool Trade which made the Fair, equally it was the Fair which gave the city its notoriety and its commercial importance. And the Fair while it lasted dominated everything—not only was all ordinary business suspended, but even the jurisdiction of the ordinary civic authorities was equally subject to its influence, and the already complex problem of civic rule was rendered topsy-turvy by a temporary transfer of authority within the city area from the Mayor to the Bailiff of the Soke,—a glorious opportunity for paying off old scores, which many a modern local administrator might well envy him.
The early history of the Fair we have already touched on. A fair had been held on St. Giles’s Hill since very early days, and with the strange incongruity of association characteristic of early times, fairs were for a long time regularly held in churchyards. But the Fair of St. Giles had long since outgrown the limits of the little churchyard of St. Giles, on the hill which bears his name, and successive charters of William II. and later sovereigns had made the rights and profits of the Fair the perquisite and privilege of the Bishop of Winchester, who had the power of exclusive trading within the area of the Fair during its duration. Originally granted for three days, Henry I. had extended the period to eight, Stephen to fourteen, and Henry II. to sixteen, and this period was confirmed in the last charter granted for the Fair, viz., that given by Edward III. in 1349, in which all the privileges of the Fair were rehearsed and solemnly confirmed. The procedure connected with the Fair was minute and formal. On the 31st of August, the Eve of St. Giles, the Bishop took possession, as it were, by setting up his court in the Pavilionis Aula, or Hall of the Pavilion, on the top of the hill. The court being formally constituted, Justiciaries or Bailiffs of the Fair were appointed, who at once proceeded either to Southgate or Kingsgate, where the Mayor, Bailiffs, and citizens of Winchester were required to meet them, and dutifully to deliver up the keys of the gate, and from thence to accompany them in turns to the Westgate, the Wool Staple, and the other gates in succession, and to deliver up the keys of each, while the Fair was solemnly proclaimed and the transfer of authority effected. The proclamation made forbade the buying and selling, while the Fair lasted, of articles of general merchandise, other than food, anywhere in Winchester or within seven leagues’ radius (10-1/2 miles), except within the limits of the Fair itself.
This done, the humiliation of the Mayor and Bailiffs was completed by their being required to humbly attend the usurping authorities to the Bishop’s Pavilion, thenceforward to submit to their jurisdiction, with what grace they might, till the Fair was over. Nor was it only at Winchester that the Fair was proclaimed—Southampton, though actually beyond the seven leagues’ radius, was included in the prohibited area, and here and at all important points on the boundary of the Fair zone, the same proclamation was made and formal possession taken. Nor was it only smuggling that the Fair officials had to guard against. Outlaws of the Robin Hood type—of whom the notorious Adam of Gurdon, Bailiff of Alton, and Lord of the Manor of Selborne, was perhaps the most famous—were accustomed to lay in wait and levy blackmail on merchants and travellers who had business at the Fair, and at all particularly dangerous spots, such as the Pass of Alton, as it was called, the spot on the road from London to Alton where the thick woodland made highway robbery a comparatively easy matter, sergeants, armed and mounted, were stationed to keep the Pass.